I think I would take the view that, although it shouldn't have been necessary to ask the question, because he systematically misled the public over a number of years it sadly became necessary.

As to the leadership election....I do think Hughes' campaign is probably now holed below the waterline, which at least has the benefit of clarifying the choice facing Lib Dem members.

What I hope will now happen is that those Hughes supporters who want to see energetic leadership coupled with radical policies will realise that Chris Huhne stands a far better chance of defeating Ming Campbell.

Jan 30 update. Not surprisingly, Huhne has latched on to this idea and is now seeking to convince people that it's a two-horse race.

As ever with the Lib Dems, it could all come down to tactical voting.....

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"He saw politics very much like Trollope, as the interplay of personalities seeking preferment, rather than, like me, as a conflict of principles and programmes about social and economic change."

Denis Healey, writing about Roy Jenkins in "The Time of My Life."

"I'll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with a series of far-fetched resolutions, and these are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code. And you go through the years sticking to that, outdated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council, a Labour council, hiring taxis to scuttle round the city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers. I'll tell you - and you'll listen - you can't play politics with people's jobs and with people's homes and with people's services."

Neil Kinnock, Bournemouth 1985

"But the most eloquent message concerns the Blair government. It must be right at all times. Above all, the integrity of the leader can never be challenged. He never did hype up intelligence. He didn't take Britain to war on any other than the stated terms. Any suggestion of half-truth, or disguised intention, or concealed Bushite promises is the most disgraceful imaginable charge that deserves a state response that knows no limit.

"That's how a sideshow came to take over national life. Now it seems to have taken a wretched, guiltless man's life with it. Such is the dynamic that can be unleashed by a leader who believes his own reputation to be the core value his country must defend."

Hugo Young, on the death of Dr David Kelly, 2003

"The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It's the way I see football, the way I see life."